She hung up, ears buzzing with adrenaline, eyes wide and darting over every surface of the room. Oh God, had Everett heard any of that?
Leaping from bed, she hurried to her door and cracked it open. The front room lurked dark and quiet, Everett’s door still shut tight. The bathroom between them would have muffled her words before they could leak through his wall. He was safe. Or she was.
Lily got herself a glass of water and raised it with a shaky hand. She hoped that would stop her tears, but they still came, and she had to cover her mouth and rush back to her room before a sob could escape.
Everett had only the one birthday card. He didn’t know about the others. Didn’t know about the calls. Jones had gotten more persistent recently, but she’d keep him from Everett as long as she could.
Another sob broke free. How could she have been so completely taken in by a charlatan?
It’s not fair. The phrase echoed through her head with slightly less volume than it once had. Not fair not fair not fair. It had been the mantra of her every breakdown once, but now it was only weary anger. Life wasn’t fair to most people, after all. At least she’d chosen that man, even if he’d withheld very important information. Everett had been given no choice at all.
Jones had walked into the downtown St. Louis coffee shop where she’d worked the summer after her first year of community college. He’d immediately introduced himself, saying, “You’re new here!” like she was a big surprise.
He’d only been three years past his own degree in accounting, so he’d stood out from the other white middle-class business guys who worked in St. Louis during the day before fleeing in a panic for the suburbs at night.
In fact, Jones had rented a cool little loft apartment in the minuscule tourist area of town, near the arch. Lily had been sharing an apartment in the much larger and shittier area of downtown past the railroad station, so he’d started offering advice about nearby take-out food. Then he’d asked if she’d like to grab take-out with him.
He hadn’t been the most handsome man in the world, but he’d thoroughly seduced her. At twenty-five, he’d seemed light-years ahead of boys her own age. He’d taken her on real dates, planned weekend trips, he’d turned all his charm and focus on her, on Lily, and she had soaked it up like a plant growing toward an open window.
When she’d started classes in the fall, it had felt so much harder than before. All her time spent on dry homework and her minimum-wage job just so she could pay for more boring classes. When Jones had asked her to move out of her roach-infested sublet and into his bright and airy loft, she’d voiced only a token resistance. With no rent payment, she could cut her work hours and spend more time with Jones. Then when she’d gotten pregnant . . .
God, she’d fallen head over heels for that man, and she’d tumbled along for years, blindly in love.
She could see now how he’d wheedled his way into every nook and cranny of her many dysfunctions. A girl with a faint memory of a steady father who’d come home every night to their beautiful house . . . until he hadn’t. Until he’d left for a younger, less volatile woman and started a new family. A father who’d drifted in and out of Lily’s dull life before disappearing completely once the new kids had been born.
She’d craved stability. She could see that now. She’d dreamed of her own perfect nuclear family as her mom moved from shitty boyfriend to shitty boyfriend and her dad forgot her birthday year after year.
Jones had offered Lily her dream before she was even out of her teens. It could have been raining red flags and she wouldn’t have noticed past their weekend trips to look at model homes, then their weekend trips to big-box furniture stores, then the emotional trip to an obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy test.
She’d walked away from college and friends and her job, and she’d sunk herself deep into the world of Jones.
The fictional world of Jones.
She’d been steeped in it, completely submerged. When her father had died unexpectedly from a massive heart attack, she hadn’t been sure she wanted to attend the funeral, but Jones had insisted, and so they’d gone. And that had been the start of a dream that had morphed into a nightmare while she wasn’t looking.
Once he’d clapped eyes on the idyllic little town of Herriman, he’d begun talking ceaselessly about giving Everett the perfect life, and Lily had been a dry sponge primed to soak up the fantasy.
Yes, a smaller town would be better than the St. Louis suburbs. Yes, there’d be a stronger sense of community and deep ties. They could build something in Herriman. Give their son security and love and roots. She still had family there, after all. Her father was dead, but he’d left a wife and sons behind.
Before Everett was a year old, they’d packed up for the Kansas plains. She’d never said it out loud, but she’d expected a mildly warm welcome from her father’s family. She hadn’t gotten it. Someone had finally broken the news to her that her half brothers had been unaware of her existence until she’d arrived for the funeral. She’d crashed her own dad’s funeral, adding to his new family’s grief.
Later she’d added to the grief of a whole small town, because she’d led a wolf to their door.
She could still feel the cold water from the kitchen tap splashing over her fingers. She’d been washing grapes for Everett when that echoing knock had boomed through the house, banging off hardwood floors and tasteful beige walls. She remembered cocking her head, only vaguely concerned. Then armed officers had swarmed onto her deck and approached the back door, and the twisted world of Jones had swallowed her whole.
Lily had been left with a son, a foreclosure, forty-five thousand in credit card debt, four civil lawsuits to settle, and an entire town that hated her. Not to mention years of questioning and surveillance from the police.
The least she could do for Everett was stop his father from damaging him the way her dad had damaged her. Promises broken over and over. The absolute heartbreak of realizing he just didn’t love you enough.
No. Better for Everett to know a simpler truth: his father had broken the law and he’d run to avoid arrest. He was in hiding, and he couldn’t come out.
Her son barely remembered his father now, and Lily meant to keep it that way.
CHAPTER 7
“Thanks for coming to dance practice with me,” Josephine said as they made their way slowly back to school from the small dance studio off Main Street. “It was cool to have an audience.”
“It was way more fun than doing chores.” Everett had called his mom from the office before his last class of the day and begged to go to an after-school meeting for a new robotics club. She’d immediately said yes, of course, thrilled at even a hint of interest in STEM and asking what time she should pick him up.
Everett wasn’t the least bit interested in engineering, so he had no idea when the robotics club met, but it had bought him a free afternoon to walk to Josephine’s class with her and use her iPhone while she practiced.
He’d hoped to drum up the nerve to tell her about the storage lockers and the missing women, but so far the idea of it stuck in his throat like dry rice. Still, the afternoon had paid off. He’d been able to research the missing girls’ names on Josephine’s phone and confirm that he wasn’t crazy and the bulletin board wasn’t a joke.
“Hold on,” Josephine muttered. “It’s my dad.” She stopped on the sidewalk to type out a text. “I’ve got to meet him at the station in ten.”
She walked on, but Everett felt frozen to the cement, caught between the desperate need to share and the terrible fear of doing so. “Can you keep a secret?” he blurted out, skin burning with hot regret before the words were even finished.
That got her attention. Josephine jerked to a stop and spun toward him like she was still in front of studio mirrors. “Are you kidding? Heck yeah, I can.”